


for luck

by kuro49



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 17:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4573734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The kid smells like the swamp a mile from home.</p><p>Herc has to smile because it might be a little bit crass but it works like a charm. It always does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for luck

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this tumblr post](http://kibachiin.tumblr.com/post/123018858629/life-tips-from-me-as-an-11-yr-old-witch-dump): _life tips from me as an 11 yr old witch: dump creek water down your shirt for luck, put a crayfish in the belongings of someone you want to curse, roly-poly bugs will keep the secrets that are weighing you down, poke at roadkill until you understand things you didnt before, if you dont know where youre going follow the crows_
> 
> this took a crazy amount of time to iron out, so happy birthday chuckles! :'D

i.

It is not just the crows though.

There are the wild rabbits and the snakes and mice and the kinds of birds that pick the flesh off of the bones of the dead. At 12, Chuck Hansen has followed all of them at least once when his father is running late to pick him up from school again.

To say he is surprised would be a lie.

 

Even though it is all gone now.

He knows better than to touch the insects crawling creepy all over. His dad calls the rabbits and the kangaroos a nuisance but his mum tells him that they teach you things, as dead as they may seem.

If he listens.

And he listened.

Now, he touches his hands to the stains on the pavement where the road kill waited for days and days. Where a day last week, it is finally taken away. Chuck wonders when he might be next when the asphalt burns hot beneath his palms, just not enough to give him blisters that stay.

He thinks there might be an answering _thump_ to the pulse in his blood.

 

“Hey kid.”

Chuck knows an apology when it’s due, and here is his father with the windows of his truck rolled down, the doors unlocked. Chuck picks up his backpack from the ground and hitches it over one shoulder.

“Roo’s gone, huh?”

“That was last week, dad.”

His words are left punctuated in the stale, summer heat when Chuck closes the passenger side door and Herc is left to pull away from the side of the road. There are many things that breed true through blood. This is, without a doubt, one of those things.

There is consolation here, that he still calls him anything at all.

 

Absence does not, in fact, make the heart grow fonder because if there is anything his father has taught him, his mother has done twice that.

 

 

ii.

The crustacean accident makes him a friend, not initially, no.

Initially, it gets him a black eye and a trip to the principal’s office to wait for his parents to arrive. Chuck is not the only one though. He is sitting with Mako Mori and like her mouth, her entire body too is pulled into a taut line.

And with her eyes trained straight ahead, Chuck holds his breath waiting for her to blink.

 

“Where are you taking Max?”

A line of their backpacks, a mess of indoor shoes, and not another classmate in sight, she is looking right where Chuck has their class pet cradled in one hand.

“None of your business, Mori.”

Mako’s mouth pulls into a tight, flat line at that.

 

When their teacher finds the both of them, Max does not end up in Becket’s backpack like Chuck intended. Chuck is a little busy clutching at the half of his face where Mako’s fist landed, the two of them fighting when the crayfish having closed one of its claws over Mako’s fingertips.

Naturally, the rest descends into chaos.

 

It’s a kind of day that leaves the interior of their vehicles sweltering with the heat, the kind that leaves the roads ahead a mirage.

Mori is not a name Hercules Hansen recognizes when he pulls into the parking lot of the school in the middle of the week. And Charles is not a boy Stacker Pentecost is ever made aware of as he walks through the door to the principal’s office just after noon.

“Well, I’d be damned.”

They look to one another with their children sitting in the oversized chairs between them, Chuck with a black eye and Mako with bandages all over her hands. The recognition is immediate.

Stacker is hit with the memory of the smell of river water in the desert sand.

“Crayfish, is it?”

They do not meet over a crustacean incident in the classroom.

There is a joint operation years ago that happens first.

 

 

iii.

“Have fun, baby.”

His mother drops a kiss to the top of Chuck’s head, presses another to the corner of his father’s mouth, and laughs when Chuck wrinkles his nose at the sight of his parents being affectionate at all.

“We will.”

His father’s promise feels like the world. His mother waves at them before pulling away, leaving father and son to fend for themselves while she spends a day with her friends before Herc is deployed again, this time overseas. He loses Chuck not even three hours into the day.

 

Herc drives for an hour before he finds his kid by the side of the road, pulling a wagon behind him.

And in it, there are just jars next to jars filled to the brim with water from the creek. The kid smells like the swamp a mile from home and Herc has to smile even though they are probably going to get an earful from Ange when she gets his frantic voicemails.

"Need a hand, kiddo?"

Chuck glances from the contents of his wagon to the back of his dad’s truck and figures he still has a long way if he goes by foot. Climbing into the passenger seat, he watches through the rear view mirror as his father carefully puts away each jar in the backseat, he doesn't see the immediate relief in Herc's face that still hasn't gone completely away.

Herc’s attempt at a lecture is cut off in the middle of the sentence when Chuck tells him with all the seriousness a 6 year old kid can muster.

"If you drop any, drop it on yourself, dad."

 

In the morning, Herc leaves with a mason jar tucked inside his deployment bag, in between his vest and a spare pair of socks.

It might be a little bit crass, this old trick, but it works like a charm. It always does.

 

 

iv.

They are in the narrow kitchen of the Hansen home, and no one should be drinking this early on a Saturday morning. But Hercules figures he gets a pass on this one when he is explaining too much in what is probably going to amount to the smallest word count he can get away with.

“People used to think we were vampires, werewolves, witches.” Herc pauses there, giving Stacker an out but the man sitting at his kitchen counter isn’t looking at him like he’s gone mad. “They got one of those things right.”

It reminds him of how Angela took very little convincing that first time he admits to this too.

Unlike her though, Stacker doesn’t have a trace of anything else in his blood.

 

“Your hair?”

"Thought we stole the blood from the dead, fire from hell, Stacks.”

Hercules tells him with a laugh, something bitter, something harsh like he can remember every drowning like his own.

She answers for him.

“He’s not that good.”

Stacker does not hear her coming but here she is, sitting next to him, looking like she has been listening to their conversation the whole time. Angela Hansen’s smile is all dimples, and they only deepen when her husband passes her a hot cup of coffee from across the counter, not looking one bit fazed.

 

“And the crayfish?”

Stacker asks, after, when the kids are spent. The two of them sitting quiet in the grass, their heads bowed, their fingers in the soil, the front of their shirts soaking wet. Stacker feels like he should have more questions than just this.

“It's not a very good curse,” Angela tells him because the critters with more than four legs have always been her thing.

Herc is content with simply looking to their son because Chuck still does not give his old man the satisfaction that he listens to him at all even though it has been more than a year since he handed in his resignation. But there he is with his empty mason jars and a friend that isn't one of the stray dogs up and down these streets.

“Crustaceans are too temperamental to be reliable.”

Angela leaves out the parts where curses need intent, and like father, like son, neither one of them are particularly good with anything outside of a good luck charm or two.

 

XXX Kuro


End file.
